It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A team of scientists in the US have accidentally created overly-aggressive mutant hamsters following a gene-editing experiment.
Using the controversial CRISPR technology, researchers at Northwestern University were examining a hormone called vasopressin and its receptor, Avpr1a.
They opted to try and remove the latter from a group of Syrian hamsters, with the expectation it would increase bonding and co-operation between the lovable little critters.
That’s because Avpr1a is understood to regulate things like teamwork and friendship as well as dominance and bonding.
Their expectation proved to be wrong. Very wrong.
‘We were really surprised at the results,’ said Professor H Elliot Albers, the lead researcher on the study.
‘We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication.
‘But the opposite happened.’
The academics found the adorable bundles of fluff turned into mutant rage monsters exhibiting ‘high levels of aggression towards other same-sex individuals’.
originally posted by: ancientlight
We are doomed. I imagine they will 'accidentally' edit genes in a person to be more aggressive.
Never mind how awful it is what they did to those poor hamsters. They are barbaric and think they are 'God'
In a report published in the Oct. 20 issue of Science Translational Medicine, researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center say animal and human data suggest gene therapy to the brain may be able to treat patients with major depression who do not respond to traditional drug treatment.
In 2006, Dr. Greengard and his Rockefeller colleagues discovered that the p11 gene appears to play a key role in depression. They found p11 protein is needed to bring receptors that bind to the neurotransmitter serotonin to the surface of nerve cells. In the brain, serotonin regulates mood, appetite and sleep, among other functions, and most antidepressants seek to regulate serotonin.
"In the absence of p11, a neuron can produce all the serotonin receptors it needs, but they will not be transported to the cell surface and therefore won stick out and latch on to the neurotransmitter," says Dr. Kaplitt.
So the researchers decided to disable function of the p11 gene in mice using a virus which would produce an siRNA -- small pieces of double-stranded RNA -- that blocked the genes expression. Once they showed this could be done, they chose to selectively target p11 expression in the nucleus accumbens brain area because human functional MRI studies at Weill Cornell had shown this area to be particularly affected in depressed patients.
In the current study, he inserted the p11 gene into the virus and delivered them to the nucleus accumbens of the p11-free mice. The treatment effectively reversed depression-like behaviors in the mice.
Gene-editing experiment turns fluffy hamsters into ‘aggressive’ mutant rage monsters
In-Depth: Study suggests coronavirus infection could alter our DNA
Researchers used CRISPR on cockroaches in a first that opens the door to future gene-editing research on insects.
Warning: Mutant chickens may bite. Researchers have identified a genetic mutation that creates incipient teeth in bird embryos. The discovery provides a modern day glimpse of a feature that hasn't been seen in avians for millions of years.
Birds lost their choppers 70 million to 80 million years ago.
The finding is a great example of how altering the location of gene expression can cause changes in body types over time, says biologist Scott Gilbert of Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "The real wow here," adds Paul Sharpe, a biochemist at the Department of Craniofacial Development at Kings College London, "is that these guys essentially show a glimpse of what the teeth probably looked like in the first birds."
Cat owners might find a glow-in-the-dark kitty to be fairly useful—you’ll never trip over the cat at night again—but the Mayo Clinic scientists who created this glowing cat had a bigger goal in mind: fighting AIDS.
The substance that makes the cat glow is a version of the green fluorescent protein that lights up the crystal jelly, a type of jellyfish that lives off the West Coast of the United States. Years ago scientists realized that the gene for GFP is a perfect marker when they insert another new gene into an organism. By inserting a version of GFP along with their gene of choice, they could easily see if they were successful because the organism would glow. Since the technique was first developed, researchers have made many glowing animals, including pigs, mice, dogs, even fish you can buy in the pet store.
Scientists in the UK have successfully created tomatoes that make large amounts of vitamin D in their leaves and fruit using pioneering gene editing technology.
The researchers used Crispr, the most popular gene editing technology, to make a tiny change in the tomato’s DNA. This greatly increased concentrations in both leaves and fruit of a molecule called provitamin D3. The molecule is then converted through exposure to ultraviolet light or sunshine into D3, the vitamin’s most beneficial form in humans.
originally posted by: neoholographic
We're just seeing a small portion of the research being done.
The problem is scientist don't know the code.
For instance, scientist can see a decrease in the p11 protein in patients with depression. They then use CRISPR to increase the levels of p11. They don't know if a decrease of p11 is associated with an increase in other proteins. You now have a case where an increase in p11 and these other proteins at the same time and you don't know what you would be creationg in humans.
What if you mess around with the genes of roaches and you trigger genes that make them venemous?
The point is, they don't know but like I said the cat is already out of the bag.